(seafood.vasep.com.vn) Keeping the good growth from the beginning of the year, Vietnam’s cephalopod exports to Japan in the first 8 months of 2017 reached US$94 million, up 43% over the same period in 2016. The market ranked the second in top cephalopod buyers of Vietnam, occupying 23%.

In early 2017, the production of raw cephalopod in Japan decreased as well as the yen exchange rate increased which partly led to a rise in imports of Vietnam cephalopod into Japan.

However, according to the statistics from the International Trade Centre (ITC), in the first 6 months of this year, Japan's cephalopod imports reached 29 thousand MT, worth by US$171 million; down 32% in volume and 41% in value over the same period last year. That was driven by a decrease in the global supplies of cephalopod.

In this period, top 4 major suppliers to Japan included China, Vietnam, Peru and Thailand.

In terms of volume, Vietnam was the second largest exporter of cephalopod to Japan, behind China with the share of 9.4%.

In Japan, Vietnam cephalopod has a competitive price compared to Thailand and India. In the first 5 months of this year, the import average price of Vietnam cephalopod into Japan quoted at US$7/kg.

This year, Japan boosted imports of processed squid products, accounting for more than 85% of total import volume while reducing those of other items such as frozen squid, processed and frozen octopus compared to the same period last year.